To start a new chapter

Every time I finished a chapter, the toughest part is to start a new chapter.  This is the case literally because the cognitive load required on any topics of algorithmic study is high.  Especially when you try to go deep and immerse yourself in it.   As far as I can see, this is the most effective to learn.   A browsing type of technique usually doesn't help.

Of course, the high cognitive load also made me feel very tired whenever I finished one chapter.   So far, the two chapters I went through are quite independent and each of them can simulate a lot of thoughts.   I am glad that if I started to deep read them.  It could be more mind-draining. 

"Silly you, how draining can that be if you just want to learn big O?"  It depends on how serious you are, to explain this, imagine you always hear people say insertion sort is O(n^2) or the best case of insertion sort is O(n).  Do these sentences ring an alarm bell in your mind.   How about the soft oh notation? Does that reflect what O notation really is?   If you don't feel these are important issues, I am probably talking with a wall.   But if you feel these are actually difficult issues, then you are on the right spot.   Growth analysis is actually one issue which is very closed to real analysis.   Sometimes you need to have more than normal creativity to understand a certain issue in it.

As for me, after one chapter, my question is always "How can I start the next chapter? and When?"  I remember when I self-study a book in number theory.  I was quite stumbled by Legendre polynomial.  These are usual feeling.  There are always topics in math/CS books which are deeper than you thought.

My next chapter would be Chapter 4, recurrences.  Though I have worked through half of the problems already, the question remains to me : how come sometime I can't see a recursion solution of a problem.  How can I gain what so called "recursive thinking" more?  Those have been stuck in my mind for a while.   My guess is like verbs in romance language, you need to use it to really grok it.

And at a moment I feel stuck, what I will do is to reboot my life slowly by doing small things.  In fact, what I said in the first sentence is not only true literally, it's probably true metaphorically.